The art of wearing and a fashion designer named Hussein

Art worn on the body

In the spring and summer of 2005, a variety of fashion art exhibitions are blossoming all over the world. Yohji Yamamoto is in Paris, Giacoa Prada is in Shanghai, and Giorgio Armani is in Tokyo. Of course, there is Chanel Classic Fashion Show called "Chanel" staged at the Metropolitan Museum of New York.

Five years ago, when Armani held a similar clothing art exhibition for the first time at the Guggenheim Museum a few blocks away from Metropolitan, the doubt about whether Armani's suit could be regarded as an art piece had also caused many news media to be affectionate. Infuriated, some fiercely art critics even called the exhibition an act of prostitution for money by the New York Art Institute. Nowadays, nobody seems to publish such vulgar comments, and the exhibition of clothes in the museum seems to have been the most common thing in the world.

Not only that, but probably driven by the generous power of Chanel’s self-sponsorship and self-promotion, most mainstream American media have used a lot of space to cover the Metropolitan Chanel exhibition, such as the fashion of The Washington Post. After Robin Gihan, a columnist, repeated these nasty stories like Marilyn Monroe and No. 5 perfume, most of his comments were expressed in the form of “surprisingly, these clothes The vast majority of it was designed more than 50 years ago. It is difficult to conceive of what an era that Chanel never had, because the vast majority of her creation has become the most basic component of the fashion industry. It's up."

The lack of rhetoric and repetition of fashion critics may be excusable, after all, for the pioneers of Chanel’s 1920s sportswear, the influence of men’s derivative women’s clothing, and the creation of Bohemian artistic style in the 1930s. And what are the unfamiliar old facts of the pioneers of the tweed suit trend of the 1950s? What's more, curators of this exhibition strictly limited the scope of the exhibition to clothing and did not have any biographical content related to Chanel himself. Faced with the more than 50 sets of Chanel clothing displayed in the Metropolitan Museum and her checked handbags, two-tone shoes or artificial pearl necklaces and Byzantine-style Maltese cross necklaces, it is likely to make people more interested and more enjoyable. The road is a glorious history between the French woman born in 1883 and her many prestigious lovers, such as how a Russian lover made her focus on the use of fur, and how an English lover stirred her up against tweed. The love of this fabric, for example, after the end of the "World War II", whether Chanel was personally consulted with General de Gaulle, then made Chanel, who was considered a pro-Nazi, eventually escaped and fled to exile in Switzerland?

Chanel's history seems doomed to be entangled with German men. Twelve years after her death, another German man, Karl Lagerfeld, entered the fashion company, which was already on the brink of death, and given him new life. Using his blend of the classic respect and sarcasm of Ms. Chanel’s classic style, this ponytailed, dark-gloomy German has now taken control of one of the most successful luxury brands in the world for 22 years. Therefore, the exhibition of the Metropolitan Museum is not just a retrospective. It is organized into a dialogue between the modernist philosophy of Chanel and postmodern philosophy of Lagerfeld; and the exhibits are not limited to only Chanai. Er's own work also includes the design contributed by Lagerfeld to Chanel.

Even if you don't indulge in the tangled issue of whether or not fashion is an art, it's not easy to appreciate in a quiet museum a certain set of simple fabrics and a satin cocktail Dress. The perceptible seams or the elaborately stitched lace and black jade patches on an elegant Evening Dress should be an arduous task for ordinary people who have not been influenced by the “fashion art”. On the other hand, Lagerfeld is said to hate the idea of ​​exhibiting fashion in a museum. He once said: "The costumes in the museum can never appear on a real human body. And a person's body and posture And the state of mind is what really gives the magic of a piece of clothing.” However, it is said that the Metropolitan Museum Garment Association has an unspoken requirement that it never organizes an exhibition for any designer who is still alive. So, this time the fashion show including Lagerfeld probably has a bit of anatomy of the dead body.

Despite this, when more and more young fashion designers expect to express their ideas and ideas through costume design, it is still believed that there are indeed mutual dialogues and interactions between the two separate entities of fashion and art. The possibility. Perhaps based on this belief, The Groninger Museum in Holland is organizing a work exhibition of his 10-year design career for British designer Hussein Charlayan who was born in Cyprus.

The “Hussein Chara Young Exhibition” at the Groninger Museum of Art uses videos, installations, photography, and other means to display Hussein Charlayan’s works and explore the designer’s thinking methods. As well as the connection between his works and society, most of the exhibits come from the clothing line that designers used to have confusing names, such as the "fate of passengers" in the spring/summer 2003 series, and the human technology and nature in 2000. For the theme of "Before Negative Numbers", or "Between" before, it was the end of a group of models that were naked from the naked body to being wrapped in Muslim robes. However, compared to the way that most fashion shows have turned pavilions into showrooms, perhaps the distance between such exhibitions and art is indeed closer.